( me / via )

Poetry and the Confessional.

"Ever

Where, swift and wool in going?
Fell always wishing like this.

Tomorrow, want less and hunger bigger.
Fewer terror but stronger, staggered.

Taken heart outside to dry.
Rain surprise and ruined.

Silver cold and stops the swelling.
Why hurts from other body?

Why photo soothes with flat?
Salt soaks blood tender.

Brighten flesh in slap.
With word, not blood silent.

Not leave and take me
nowhere, swift and wool in going."

--Brenda Shaughnessy, Interior with Sudden Joy (1999)

Building a Mystery.

"Aelian writes of Trizus, the tyrant, that he commanded his subjects not to speak together, and when they used signs, instead of words, he also forbade those; whereupon the afflicted people met in the market-place to at least weep for their misfortunes, but neither was that permitted..." --Jeremy Taylor

If I Were King (1938).